--- title: mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the... description: A detailed account of reverse engineering the SGI O2 workstation's PROM firmware to enable CPU upgrades. The author built a decompiler that converts the 512... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/mattst88-s-blog---reverse-engineering-the-prom-for-the-sgi-o2-iqbx2b5qm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the SGI O2 | daily.dev og:description: A detailed account of reverse engineering the SGI O2 workstation's PROM firmware to enable CPU upgrades. The author built a decompiler that converts the 512... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/mattst88-s-blog---reverse-engineering-the-prom-for-the-sgi-o2-iqbx2b5qm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Iqbx2b5qM.png og:image:alt: mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the SGI O2 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # mattst88's blog - Reverse Engineering the PROM for the SGI O2 **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 24 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A detailed account of reverse engineering the SGI O2 workstation's PROM firmware to enable CPU upgrades. The author built a decompiler that converts the 512 KiB binary into modifiable assembly by discovering the firmware's structure: section headers (SHDRs), checksums, code/data boundaries, and virtual memory layout. Key discoveries included identifying the five firmware sections, understanding MIPS jump instructions and memory regions, recognizing overlaid ELF headers, and implementing two's complement checksums. The decompiler now produces bit-identical reassemblable output with annotations, making the 1996 firmware comprehensible and modifiable without SGI's original source code. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Reverse Engineering The PROM For The SGI O2](https://daily.dev/posts/reverse-engineering-the-prom-for-the-sgi-o2-2p4yh08gd) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [80386 microcode disassembled « Reenigne blog](https://daily.dev/posts/80386-microcode-disassembled-reenigne-blog-0ebv15p9k) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Linux on the Sega 32X. 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